Virtual IT Support

Posted by Timothy Platt on Nov 11, 2017

Virtual IT Support is the Best Tech Support Option for Small Business – Here’s Why

Do you need tech support for your small business? If so, Virtual IT Support is the best option to meet your computer support needs. What is Virtual IT Support? In a lot of ways, it’s outsourcing of IT. But it’s much more than that. Virtual IT Support (also known as Virtual IT Services) is a combination of the right skills, tools, and services to resolve your computer issues and requests quickly – from anywhere, and at any time.

In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of Virtual IT Support. Here at Virtual Operations, this is one of the primary services we offer our clients, and we have years of experience in this field.

Why Virtual IT Support?

Before we outline what Virtual IT Support is, let’s talk about why you would want it. For any business, it’s a well-known best practice to focus on your core services and products – and outsource the rest. If your business makes and sells “widgets” – that’s what you should be focusing on – not hiring, training, and managing technical staff. Hire, train, and manage the best widget makers instead.

But clearly you need technology support and you desire the benefits. You want to be able to rely on experienced technicians, that respond promptly, and that can resolve issues (from simple to complex) with the absolute minimum of disruption to your business.

Lastly, what if those same experienced technicians could be up to speed on your network, computers, and servers – and took care of them proactively? And thereby eliminating a lot of issues before they even happen?

Clearly, that would be the most desirable outcome for a business. To have the technology concerns disappear, and be able to work at maximum productivity and efficiency with no disruption.

Virtual IT Support provides deep and broad technology skills

It’s amazing just how much technology the average small business relies on today. Windows, Mac, smartphones, tablets, WiFi, Ethernet, Internet, and now, the cloud. This has been driven by numerous trends, such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) – where tech savvy employees are demanding to use best in class devices – which are sometimes more than the business wants to invest in. Technology in 2017 allows your business to do more than ever, and quickly. But at the same time, the environments are more complex than ever, and concerns such as data privacy and cyber security are only growing.

What Does “Virtual” Mean? In the field of computers, virtual is defined as “not physically existing as such but made to appear to do so”. Virtualization is the way we take something and make it better – get the benefits and eliminate the drawbacks. That’s why we call it virtual IT support – you don’t have to build and manage the team and tool presence, but your business still derives the benefits.

To tackle these challenges, to be able to support this broad footprint of tech, you need experienced technicians. Technicians with both deep and broad skills. Gone are the days when a computer problem involved only a single vendor. Problems now can span the local network, the Internet connection, cloud systems, in addition to the desktop computers. The biggest issue we see with small business is that you simply do not have the time to keep up to date on all these technologies and the related trends such as cyber-security. Staying up to date is a full-time job, and quite frankly, you have better things to do.

Your ideal virtual IT team will have the skillsets you need, but only when you need them. You don’t want to have to foot the bill for a top-notch network engineer year-round. But when serious network issues arise – such as performance, security, or major upgrades – you’ll need someone who can drop into the situation and resolve it quickly.

We take that concept and apply it to all areas. We have personnel deeply trained and knowledgeable about all areas of small business technology – Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more. We also maintain a bench of staff knowledgeable in all the “back office” technology – WiFi, LANs, Ethernet, Internet connectivity, and of course, servers and storage – both onsite and in the cloud. When you have a problem that requires these skills, that person can be brought in – quickly and effectively – without high cost.

Support When and Where You Need It

Ok, so Virtual IT Support can provide a Virtual IT team – a crack team of experts who are ready when you need them – but you aren’t paying the bill around the clock. This team also needs to be able to assist when and where you need them.

The small business workforce of today has more flexiblity than ever – work from the office, work from home, work from the road, work on weekdays, weekends, and holidays. All this drives the need for your IT team to be able to support your employees and locations anywhere and at any time. That’s a challenge, for sure, but it can be overcome with the right tools and technologies.

We use special remote support tools to ensure we can assist anyone, at any time. All they need is an Internet connection. We’re able to check and resolve problems using this special software in many cases without even interrupting the user. What if the user can’t get on the Internet? Then we can travel to their location or assist them over the phone. It takes a bit more time, but our team gets the job done whatever is required.

We don’t just use these tools to support your employees – we also manage, monitor, and maintain all your server, storage, and network devices around the clock – no matter where they are located. We can tell when a device or network is down, and take action as appropriate. We go onsite when we need to, but it’s always quicker and cheaper to resolve a problem remotely. We’ll also work directly with your technology vendors and providers, such as your ISP, when needed.

Proactive Support is the Best Support

And that brings us to our final point – proactive support is the best support. If you use a support provider that has zero knowledge or familiarity with your environment you are going to spend a lot of time explaining things, every time there is an issue. It’s a tax you’ll pay forever. And inevitably, those support personnel are going to make some bad decisions, and cause even more issues. This is all due to the fact that they don’t know your business, your environment, or your users.

We use Managed IT Services to eliminate these issues. It’s a proactive approach – we understand all your machines and users, networks and applications – all ahead of time. We’re ready for the problems and requests before they arrive.

Isn’t this more expensive? Over the long run – no. The better reliability, increased staff efficiency, and quick problem resolution that you experience will easily make up for any cost difference in a very short period of time. What’s more, we can also provide IT project services – upgrades and improvements to your environment – to ensure you have the latest capabilities that your workforce needs.

Lastly, a proactive approach is 100% necessary for cyber-security. There are two cyber-security rules that small business needs to be aware of. #1 – if it’s got a computer chip in it, it can be hacked. #2 – if it’s on the Internet – it’s a target. We could go into a deeper explanation of these points, but the fact of the matter is that every business, of every size needs a proactive cyber-security approach. And we can do that for you too. But understand there is no way to reactively provide that service. Monitoring, patching, applying mitigations for the latest security threats (there are new ones every day) is an ongoing, never-ending job.

We Are Here to Help

We hope this article has been helpful to you, and please remember we are here to help. This is the sort of tech drudgery we’d love to take off your hands, so give us a call at (407) 268-6626. We can handle these sorts of issues efficiently, because we’ve seen it all, and we know how to handle it.

Even if you already have an IT support provider, we can help determine if you are getting everything you need.